Youth and the Bright Medusa eBook

“Nobody has ever objected before. I always
wash the tub,—­and, anyhow, he’s cleaner
than most people.”

“Cleaner than me?” her eyebrows went up,
her white arms and neck and her fragrant person seemed
to scream at him like a band of outraged nymphs.
Something flashed through his mind about a man who
was turned into a dog, or was pursued by dogs, because
he unwittingly intruded upon the bath of beauty.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” he muttered,
turning scarlet under the bluish stubble of his muscular
jaws. “But I know he’s cleaner than
I am.”

“That I don’t doubt!” Her voice
sounded like a soft shivering of crystal, and with
a smile of pity she drew the folds of her voluminous
blue robe close about her and allowed the wretched
man to pass. Even Caesar was frightened; he darted
like a streak down the hall, through the door and
to his own bed in the corner among the bones.

Hedger stood still in the doorway, listening to indignant
sniffs and coughs and a great swishing of water about
the sides of the tub. He had washed it; but as
he had washed it with Caesar’s sponge, it was
quite possible that a few bristles remained; the dog
was shedding now. The playwright had never objected,
nor had the jovial illustrator who occupied the front
apartment,—­but he, as he admitted, “was
usually pye-eyed, when he wasn’t in Buffalo.”
He went home to Buffalo sometimes to rest his nerves.

It had never occurred to Hedger that any one would
mind using the tub after Caesar;—­but then,
he had never seen a beautiful girl caparisoned for
the bath before. As soon as he beheld her standing
there, he realized the unfitness of it. For that
matter, she ought not to step into a tub that any
other mortal had bathed in; the illustrator was sloppy
and left cigarette ends on the moulding.

All morning as he worked he was gnawed by a spiteful
desire to get back at her. It rankled that he
had been so vanquished by her disdain. When he
heard her locking her door to go out for lunch, he
stepped quickly into the hall in his messy painting
coat, and addressed her.

“I don’t wish to be exigent, Miss,”—­he
had certain grand words that he used upon occasion—­“but
if this is your trunk, it’s rather in the way
here.”

“Oh, very well!” she exclaimed carelessly,
dropping her keys into her handbag. “I’ll
have it moved when I can get a man to do it,”
and she went down the hall with her free, roving stride.

Her name, Hedger discovered from her letters, which
the postman left on the table in the lower hall, was
Eden Bower.